ACRL/NY Social Activism & Support Affinity Group Meeting
June 3, 2025, 1pm
via Zoom
Join us for the next meeting of the Social Activism & Support Affinity Group which will take place via Zoom on June 3, 2025 at 1 PM. On the topic of activism and libraries, we’ll start by discussing this (open access) editorial on microactivism and libraries:
Lockman, R. (2015). Academic librarians and social justice: A call to microactivism. College & Research Libraries News, 76(4), 193-194. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.76.4.9292
The article is 10 years old but is arguably still relevant to activism in academic libraries. Some questions we might discuss: 1.) Are you or your library facilitating any microactivism (or other types of activism)? 2.) Libraries are facing challenges from the federal/state level, including book bans, challenges to DEI, data removal/information erasure. Can microactivism play a role in confronting these macro issues?
3.) As the author notes, many of us are drawn to librarianship as a helping profession. Are there aspects of librarianship that align well with social justice work? Conversely, what aspects of librarianship present a challenge to this work?
If you don’t have time to read the article, please come anyway! We look forward to discussing with you.
More about the Social Activism and Support Affinity Group:
We will convene conversations on the role of librarians, libraries, and ACRL/NY in engaging with timely issues of equity, justice, and political and social discourse. College campuses have a long and rich history as a site of student organizing and activism. We saw this in 1968 as students protested the war in Vietnam, in the 1980s when students protested apartheid in South Africa, and again in the Spring of 2024 as students set up encampments, and called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for their universities to divest from the State of Israel. Now, we are facing a crisis as higher education is under attack.
This group will be a space for librarians across academic institutions to come together to wrestle with questions that are changing by the day, identify opportunities for mutual support and action, and advocate for organizational support from ACRL/NY and perhaps ACRL National.
The group will collectively establish guidelines for engaging in respectful group discussion.
Discussion questions for the group may include:
Community Agreements
We are committed to establishing a safe space where everyone is heard and treated with respect. We intend for the group to be a place where librarians can safely discuss complicated, and potentially charged, issues. The group will discuss community agreements that will help guide us in facilitating conversation and treating others with courtesy and respect. These agreements include: .
At the start of each meeting, community agreements will be reviewed to help set expectations for the group.
Liam Adler, Barnard College
Carrie Jedlicka, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
